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this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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It is correct in terms of how people have used and still use the word that the Holocaust refers specifically to the 6 million Jews who were murdered and not to the other victims of genocide and the war. There strangely isn't an all-encompassing term for all the genocide that the Nazis did afaik, though you can refer to some of the different subsections of it with various names like Aktion T4 (the "euthanasia" campaigns against the disabled and mentally ill), and Generalplan Ost sometimes gets used as a shorthand for the genocide on the eastern front.
Edit: I do agree that the phrasing of this message at least suggests reinforcing an idea of Holocaust exceptionalism, the idea that the Holocaust was a unique evil that it's improper to compare other genocides to, which is obviously an extremely backwards and chauvinist attitude that is harmful to the whole of human civilization.
I've heard it suggested that "Shoah" be used to refer to the genocide of Jews specifically, and Holocaust for the general project of Nazi genocide.
Usually, at least in an American context, the argument is that applying "Holocaust" to the killing of Jews is offensive because the word basically means "burnt offering", so "Shoah" (Hebrew for "catastrophy") should be the name instead of "Holocaust".
I agree with that, but I don't think it's a pressing issue and we're already talking about an institute that emphatically uses the older term, if you're wondering why I didn't mention it.
The Holocaust has direct links to Judaism.
Richard of Devizes a 12th century monk was the first person to use the word in regards to mass killings, and it was to describe Richard I's killing of Jews in London in 1189.
Genocide is the all encompassing term.
Maybe this is regional, but I feel like I've always heard some variation of "the Holocaust was when the Nazis killed 11 million people, 6 million of whom were Jews" as the standard definition throughout my life, making it specific to the industrialized mass murder but not specific to the Jewish victims.
It's how I was taught in Australia.
Also writers like Mike Davis ("Late Victorian Holocausts") often use the term to refer to a genocide event broadly.
Finkelstein separates the Nazi Holocaust (the genocide committed by the Nazis against Jews, Poles, Roma, etc), holocaust (a general term) and Holocaust (the public perception of the Nazi Holocaust as if it was the only genocide to ever occur and focused solely against Jews)
I've also always used to it to refer to all the victims. It makes little sense otherwise because why would people deliberately exclude the genocide of other groups also when condemning Nazis? The history of the terminology seems to be that meaning is mixed from place to place.
I guess to be clear I have to not use the term holocaust when I want to mean "The industrialised mass murder of 11 million people as part of a systematic extermination campaign". Bit more of a mouthful though.
Seconded, I think in LatAm this is how I've heard it be discussed generally.
That was my American public school experience - and at a very Jewish public school, at that.
That's interesting. I guess it probably is regional then.
Edit: I agree with your other comment about the dishonest rhetoric of this institute, though.
I think you could argue that genocide is the generalised word that was created for that. It was created in 1944.
The term genocide was coined to describe what the Nazis did, but that's different from their overall genocidal project having an individual name in the way that the Holocaust is a specific name for their killing of Jews.